I would have gone with the Agatha Christie original, but... yeah. And the censored version isn't much better. So I went with the cute kids book version I had, about ten little KITTENS, none of which died.


JULES MASERATI- Lulu Chilcott

It was like there was a shell around my heart. I knew what I did to Jules was wrong, but it bounced off the shield and didn't reach the rest of me. Probably when I got home it would, or else it would be my last regret as I died.


Lancia Audren- District Six mentor

I would have thought the placings would be reversed. Demi had the athleticism and savviness to keep herself alive, while Jules came from a more sheltered family. But then, it came as a shock to a lot of people when I won.


District Six

The Victory feast wasn't held at the Maserati house, for obvious reasons. Whether or not the Gamemakers cared in the slightest for a mother's pain, they did care about the danger of assassination events. As much as Demi's friends wanted to think they were tough, they missed her deeply. It was two years before her girlfriend re-entered the dating world, and longer still before she found someone who could match up.


Randy Mills- District Seven

What are we going to do, Laurel? What are we going to do if we're the last two left?

My math skills weren't that bad. I was aware of it, and I was choosing not to think about it. Laurel probably knew it from how I so forcefully talked about good things, like I could chase away the danger by refusing to admit it was there.

I don't think I can be the Victor, because I won't do it. For the first Games, the Tributes wouldn't kill each other. They had to send Peacekeepers in. They mowed the Tributes down like grass. Half of them died that first day, and none of them by each others' hands. They'd have to do that again, and I wouldn't do it. But I didn't think Laurel would either. No Victor, I guess. They're not gonna be happy.

Laurel was standing in the stream barefoot, splashing in the shallow water. It was dark, but there seemed to be a perpetual full moon, and it was definitely bigger than I remembered the moon being. I took off my shoes and waded next to her, happy to think about something other than our future. If neither of us would do it, neither of us would win. That meant both of us would be dead soon, so we should enjoy the river.

When we saw something moving in the water, both of us ran for it. We sat on the bank, sprawled and panting as we stared back at the water. The surface broke, and a little fat dog head looked back at us with round black eyes, as if to say "Excuse me. I was just swimming. I didn't think I'd scare you."

"Oh, it's a seal!" I said, crawling toward the water's edge as three more heads popped up.

"Nu-uh!" Laurel yelled, throwing my her in front of me. "I've read enough stories to know where this is going. "Those are selkies! They look cute, but then they turn into handsome men and seduce you and you go after them and you drown."

"They're not going to turn into handsome men and seduce us," I said confidently, not scared at all by the faint glow of the water around them.

"How do you know?" She asked.

"They know it's useless," I said. I stretched my chest back and flexed my arms. "We already have a handsome man."


Laurel Pine- District Seven female

"I should have let them eat you."

Randy was grinning like an idiot, stretched out like a bodybuilder. He struck another pose as I looked back at the selkies. They certainly were selkies- I didn't trust the Capitol one bit- but they hadn't tried anything yet. They were just swimming in the deeper middle of the river, making graceful circles and tumbling underwater. The river glowed a faint blue around them, following them like ghostly tails.

"They're kind of pretty," I said. Randy crouched next to me, and their light reflected in his eyes, little dancing dots of blue. I'd heard stories about selkies taking humans as wives or husbands. Usually it ended sadly, but sometimes it worked out. Either the selkie gave up its skin, or the human found a way to turn into one of them. I wasn't sure how one ended up attracted to a seal, but I saw the appeal of turning and rolling underwater like they did, without a care in the world.

"I think we're both going to die," I said to Randy, but it wasn't despairing. "But I think… of all the Games in the world, this is the best to die in. I rode a unicorn, I met selkies, I made some inventions that actually worked, and I made friends."

"I thought all that mattered was being a pretty face, but you never cared about that," Randy said. "I think I might have had a lot more to give to the world. It's too bad I won't, but I'm glad I found out."

"You think selkies like berries?" I wondered, digging into our bags.

"It would be so messed up if they turn out to be poisonous," Randy said.

"That's terrible," I said, tossing a handful into the water. They left little luminescent ripples as they hit, and the selkies circled around them. One of them darted underwater, and I knew our offerings were accepted.

A selkie swam up to the water's edge, looking me right in the eye. I tossed it a berry and it neatly scooped it from the water. They were such beautiful things. I wished we could watch them forever. Ever since we came into the Arena, I'd felt like I'd found out fairyland was real, and I was in it. It was far better than the real world. Even with the killing, it was better than Panem. There was magic here, the kind of magic I'd always hoped was real and never gave up looking for in the real world. I'd always hoped to find a fairy in the woods, or a gnome living in a stump. Here, I crouched by a river, watching selkies swim under the moon. It was a precious gift that I got to be part of this.

The selkies slid through the water beside us, and I didn't feel like I was intruding so much as I felt welcome.


Lulu Chilcott- District Three female

It was Laurel and Randy's Games to lose. Unless they made a mistake or got targeted by mutts, there wasn't much hope for me. While I was looking for them, trying to find out where they were so I could hide and make a plan, they were probably looking for me, and they had no need to be discreet.

In school, a lot of pre-Dark Days books were banned, but we were actually required to read Lord of the Flies. It was all about how people will act like animals unless there's a strong government in place to keep them human. We had to write essays about it and everything. I thought it was good and all, but only now did I know how brutally true it was. We'd been in the Arena for three weeks, and we were animals. We killed each other without hesitating, it entirely animalistic ways. Or maybe it was just me, and I was projecting on the others. But I'd seen the tapes. I saw what Enobaria did, and Titus before her. Some of us were animals even in society, like her, and the others hid it only just beneath the surface.

It was just as strange to know that if I got home, Leslie wouldn't treat me any differently. She knew right from wrong, but that was just it. She knew it. She didn't feel it. She wouldn't feel shame or disgust or judgement when I came home. She would know I did something wrong, but in her world, doing something wrong just meant punishment. Then everything went back to normal.

Back to normal. I would be a person again, with no trace of the Games but the scars and the memories. I would sleep in a bed and eat cooked food and never kill anyone again. It would be a terrible loneliness to live among people who had never seen that stick sharpened on both ends and never spoken to the head impaled on it.

A light flickered on in a tree above me. I jumped back, watching it nervously. It lowered slowly, and I knew then that it was a mutt. I backed away, but it didn't follow. It hovered in the same spot, then moved a few feet back and returned, like a beckoning hand.

I don't think so, I thought. I was not going to get suckered in by some horrible mutt. I would go back over and it would burn me up or something. Or maybe… I'd heard of Games where Tributes were far apart and the Gamemakeres led them together. Maybe this was just them trying to speed things up.

I covered half the distance between me and the light, stopping there and ready to run. The light moved away, stopping another twenty feet further. I followed again, maintaining the distance in case it tried anything.

Looking ahead, I could see the light was moving toward a hill. Okay, not unreasonable, I thought. Laurel and Randy weren't in the woods, so it made sense they might be hiding on the other side of the hill. Or maybe it wanted to trick me into falling off a cliff in the fading evening light. I would have to keep a sharp eye on my footing… and the light.

The light stopped in front of a cave, its light dimming as it slipped inside. I stopped in my tracks.

"Oh, no," I said, looking at the pitch-black cave with who knows what inside it. "I am not going in there. Find someone else to get killed."

I was twenty feet from the mouth of the cave. I started backing away, keeping an eye on the light. It made no move to follow me. My eyes went sideways, looking at the darkness, and it was then that I saw the two black eyes reflecting two dots of light.

I didn't know what it was that chased me. I didn't look back as I ran. I heard the crashing footsteps that told me its size, and then the bestial growl that gave it away. It wasn't a monster that lived in the cave. It was a bear.

When the last moment came and I knew the animal had overtaken me, some instinct impelled me to turn around and face it head-on. The bear hit me like a truck, knocking me into the air. It was on me as soon as I hit, hot breath blasting me in the face as a paw came down on my hip, crushing it into the dirt. I stabbed it in the leg and throat with futile jabs, the knife swallowed up by its fur and fat.

The bear brought up its arm and slashed down across my chest. The force was enough to slice its blunt claws into me like I was butter. They sank into me until the width of the claw was stopped by the distance between my ribs. The paw came away easily, flaying my chest open with strings hanging from the claws.

I went limp, staring dumbly at the bear as my ruined body tried to figure out what to heal first. There was no pain, just the pressure of the bear's weight on me. It bit my arm, and I was aware of teeth hitting teeth.

I knew my sister lived me. Leslie loved in her own way, as real as anyone else. And I was thankful for that, because her kind of love would let her go on, remembering me but feeling far less pain than someone not like her. She was shielded from that, like I was shielded from the pain of the bear. I knew what was coming when its jaws closed around the top of my head. My skull collapsed like a crushed can, but I didn't feel a thing.


3rd place: Lulu Chilcott- Mauled by a bear, with an assist from a Will-O-The-Wisp

Lulu snuck through this thing, keeping herself clear until this far into the Games. She actually only got attacked by the wolf because I saw the voting trends around the final five and made sure to give both her and Jules one last big moment to make sure I'd given them every chance to win. It DID boost Lulu's votes a lot, which is why she got third. In the end, she had supporters, but just not enough. Lulu had a good reason to get home and was willing to undergo the change it takes to become a Victor. The votes didn't go her way, but Jules and that wolf learned what she's capable of. Thanks Tracelynn for someone willing to actually hurt people to win, like you pretty much have to in the Games.

Okay I know Will-O-The-Wisps are mostly thought of as Irish, but they're in a lot of countries' folklore, including Scotland. But then most of you probably know that, since Brave was kind of famous. Fun fact there's also a Spiderman villain called Will-O-The-Wisp

I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to vote, so the finale will probably come tomorrow. There might still be a filler chapter tonight though.